Bruce Sterling bruces@well.sf.ca.us
GURPS' LABOUR LOST
Some months ago, I wrote an article about the raid on Steve
Jackson Games, which appeared in my "Comment" column in the
British science fiction monthly, INTERZONE (#44, Feb 1991).
This updated version, specially re-written for dissemination
by EFF, reflects the somewhat greater knowledge I've gained to
date, in the course of research on an upcoming nonfiction book,
THE HACKER CRACKDOWN: Law and Disorder on the Electronic
Frontier. The bizarre events suffered by Mr. Jackson and his
co-workers, in my own home town of Austin, Texas, were directly
responsible for my decision to put science fiction aside and to
tackle the purportedly real world of computer crime and
electronic free-expression. The national crackdown on computer
hackers in 1990 was the largest and best-coordinated attack on
computer mischief in American history. There was Arizona's
"Operation Sundevil," the sweeping May 8 nationwide raid
against outlaw bulletin boards. The BellSouth E911 case (of
which the Jackson raid was a small and particularly egregious
part) was coordinated out of Chicago. The New York State
Police were also very active in 1990. All this vigorous law
enforcement activity meant very little to the narrow and
intensely clannish world of science fiction. All we knew --
and this misperception persisted, uncorrected, for months --
was that Mr. Jackson had been raided because of his intention
to publish a gaming book about "cyberpunk" science fiction.
The Jackson raid received extensive coverage in science fiction
news magazines (yes, we have these) and became notorious in the
world of SF as "the Cyberpunk Bust." My INTERZONE article
attempted to make the Jackson case intelligible to the British
SF audience. What possible reason could lead an American
federal law enforcement agency to raid the headquarters of a
science-fiction gaming company? Why did armed teams of city
police, corporate security men, and federal agents roust two
Texan computer-hackers from their beds at dawn, and then
deliberately confiscate thousands of dollars' worth of computer
equipment, including the hackers' common household telephones?
Why was an unpublished book called G.U.R.P.S. Cyberpunk seized
by the US Secret Service and declared "a manual for computer
crime?" These weird events were not parodies or fantasies; no,
this was real. The first order of business in untangling this
bizarre drama is to understand the players -- who come in
entire teams.
Dramatis Personae
Player One: The Law Enforcement Agencies.
America's defense against the threat of computer crime is a
confusing hodgepodge of state, municipal, and federal
agencies. Ranked first, by size and power, are the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA),
and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), large, potent
and secretive organizations who, luckily, play almost no role
in the Jackson story. The second rank of such agencies include
the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the National Aeronatics
and Space Administration (NASA), the Justice Department, the
Department of Labor, and various branches of the defense
establishment, especially the Air Force Office of Special
Investigations (AFOSI). Premier among these groups, however,
is the highly-motivated US Secret Service (USSS), best-known to
Britons as the suited, mirrorshades-toting, heavily-armed
bodyguards of the President of the United States. Guarding
high-ranking federal officials and foreign dignitaries is a
hazardous, challenging and eminently necessary task, which has
won USSS a high public profile. But Abraham Lincoln created
this oldest of federal law enforcement agencies in order to
foil counterfeiting. Due to the historical tribulations of
the Treasury Department (of which USSS is a part), the Secret
Service also guards historical documents, analyzes forgeries,
combats wire fraud, and battles "computer fraud and abuse."
These may seem unrelated assignments, but the Secret Service is
fiercely aware of its duties. It is also jealous of its
bureaucratic turf, especially in computer-crime, where it
formally shares jurisdiction with its traditional rival, the
johnny-come-lately FBI. As the use of plastic money has
spread, and their long-established role as protectors of the
currency has faded in importance, the Secret Service has moved
aggressively into the realm of electronic crime. Unlike the
lordly NSA, CIA, and FBI, which generally can't be bothered
with domestic computer mischief, the Secret Service is noted
for its street-level enthusiasm. The third-rank of law
enforcement are the local "dedicated computer crime units."
There are very few such groups, pitifully undermanned. They
struggle hard for their funding and the vital light of
publicity. It's difficult to make white-collar computer crimes
seem pressing, to an American public that lives in terror of
armed and violent street-crime. These local groups are small
-- often, one or two officers, computer hobbyists, who have
drifted into electronic crimebusting because they alone are
game to devote time and effort to bringing law to the
electronic frontier. California's Silicon Valley has three
computer-crime units. There are others in Florida, Illinois,
Ohio, Maryland, Texas, Colorado, and a formerly very active one
in Arizona -- all told, though, perhaps only fifty people
nationwide. The locals do have one great advantage, though.
They all know one another. Though scattered across the
country, they are linked by both public-sector and
private-sector professional societies, and have a commendable
subcultural esprit-de-corps. And in the well-manned Secret
Service, they have willing national-level assistance.
PLAYER TWO: The Telephone Companies.
In the early 80s, after years of bitter federal court battle,
America's telephone monopoly was pulverized. "Ma Bell," the
national phone company, became AT&T, AT&T Industries, and the
regional "Baby Bells," all purportedly independent companies,
who compete with new communications companies and other
long-distance providers. As a class, however, they are all
sorely harassed by fraudsters, phone phreaks, and computer
hackers, and they all maintain computer-security experts. In a
lot of cases these "corporate security divisions" consist of
just one or two guys, who drifted into the work from
backgrounds in traditional security or law enforcement. But,
linked by specialized security trade journals and private
sector trade groups, they all know one another.
PLAYER THREE: The Computer Hackers.
The American "hacker" elite consists of about a hundred people,
who all know one another. These are the people who know enough
about computer intrusion to baffle corporate security and alarm
police (and who, furthermore, are willing to put their
intrusion skills into actual practice). The somewhat
older subculture of "phone-phreaking," once native only to the
phone system, has blended into hackerdom as phones have become
digital and computers have been netted-together by
telephones. "Phone phreaks," always tarred with the stigma of
rip-off artists, are nowadays increasingly hacking PBX systems
and cellular phones. These practices, unlike
computer-intrusion, offer direct and easy profit to
fraudsters. There are legions of minor "hackers," such as the
"kodez kidz," who purloin telephone access codes to make free
(i.e., stolen) phone calls. Code theft can be done with home
computers, and almost looks like real "hacking," though "kodez
kidz" are regarded with lordly contempt by the elite. "Warez
d00dz," who copy and pirate computer games and software, are a
thriving subspecies of "hacker," but they played no real role
in the crackdown of 1990 or the Jackson case. As for the dire
minority who create computer viruses, the less said the
better. The princes of hackerdom skate the phone-lines, and
computer networks, as a lifestyle. They hang out in loose,
modem-connected gangs like the "Legion of Doom" and the
"Masters of Destruction." The craft of hacking is taught
through "bulletin board systems," personal computers that carry
electronic mail and can be accessed by phone. Hacker bulletin
boards generally sport grim, scary, sci-fi heavy metal names
like BLACK ICE -- PRIVATE or SPEED DEMON ELITE. Hackers
themselves often adopt romantic and highly suspicious tough-guy
monickers like "Necron 99," "Prime Suspect," "Erik Bloodaxe,"
"Malefactor" and "Phase Jitter." This can be seen as a kind
of cyberpunk folk-poetry -- after all, baseball players also
have colorful nicknames. But so do the Mafia and the Medellin
Cartel.
PLAYER FOUR: The Simulation Gamers.
Wargames and role-playing adventures are an old and honored
pastime, much favored by professional military strategists and
H.G. Wells, and now played by hundreds of thousands of
enthusiasts throughout North America, Europe and Japan. In
today's market, many simulation games are computerized, making
simulation gaming a favorite pastime of hackers, who dote on
arcane intellectual challenges and the thrill of doing
simulated mischief. Modern simulation games frequently have a
heavily science-fictional cast. Over the past decade or so,
fueled by very respectable royalties, the world of simulation
gaming has increasingly permeated the world of science-fiction
publishing. TSR, Inc., proprietors of the best-known
role-playing game, "Dungeons and Dragons," own the venerable
science-fiction magazine "Amazing." Gaming-books, once
restricted to hobby outlets, now commonly appear in
chain-stores like B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks, and sell
vigorously. Steve Jackson Games, Inc., of Austin, Texas, is a
games company of the middle rank. In early 1990, it employed
fifteen people. In 1989, SJG grossed about half a million
dollars. SJG's Austin headquarters is a modest two-story brick
office-suite, cluttered with phones, photocopiers, fax machines
and computers. A publisher's digs, it bustles with
semi-organized activity and is littered with glossy promotional
brochures and dog-eared SF novels. Attached to the offices is
a large tin-roofed warehouse piled twenty feet high with
cardboard boxes of games and books. This building was the site
of the "Cyberpunk Bust." A look at the company's wares, neatly
stacked on endless rows of cheap shelving, quickly shows SJG's
long involvement with the Science Fiction community. SJG's
main product, the Generic Universal Role-Playing System or
G.U.R.P.S., features licensed and adapted works from many genre
writers. There is GURPS Witch World, GURPS Conan, GURPS
Riverworld, GURPS Horseclans, many names eminently familiar to
SF fans. (GURPS Difference Engine is currently in the
works.) GURPS Cyberpunk, however, was to be another story
entirely.
PLAYER FIVE: The Science Fiction Writers.
The "cyberpunk" SF writers are a small group of mostly
college-educated white litterateurs, without conspicuous
criminal records, scattered through the US and Canada. Only
one, Rudy Rucker, a professor of computer science in Silicon
Valley, would rank with even the humblest computer hacker.
However, these writers all own computers and take an intense,
public, and somewhat morbid interest in the social
ramifications of the information industry. Despite their small
numbers, they all know one another, and are linked by antique
print-medium publications with unlikely names like SCIENCE
FICTION EYE, ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, OMNI and
INTERZONE.
PLAYER SIX: The Civil Libertarians.
This small but rapidly growing group consists of heavily
politicized computer enthusiasts and heavily cyberneticized
political activists: a mix of wealthy high-tech entrepreneurs,
veteran West Coast troublemaking hippies, touchy journalists,
and toney East Coast civil rights lawyers. They are all
getting to know one another.
We now return to our story. By 1988, law enforcement
officials, led by contrite teenage informants, had thoroughly
permeated the world of underground bulletin boards, and were
alertly prowling the nets compiling dossiers on wrongdoers.
While most bulletin board systems are utterly harmless, some
few had matured into alarming reservoirs of forbidden
knowledge. One such was BLACK ICE -- PRIVATE, located
"somewhere in the 607 area code," frequented by members of the
"Legion of Doom" and notorious even among hackers for the
violence of its rhetoric, which discussed sabotage of
phone-lines, drug-manufacturing techniques, and the assembly of
home-made bombs, as well as a plethora of rules-of-thumb for
penetrating computer security. Of course, the mere discussion
of these notions is not illegal -- many cyberpunk SF stories
positively dote on such ideas, as do hundreds of spy epics,
techno-thrillers and adventure novels. It was no coincidence
that "ICE," or "Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics," was a
term invented by cyberpunk writer Tom Maddox, and "BLACK ICE,"
or a computer-defense that fries the brain of the unwary
trespasser, was a coinage of William Gibson. A reference
manual from the US National Institute of Justice, "Dedicated
Computer Crime Units" by J. Thomas McEwen, suggests that
federal attitudes toward bulletin-board systems are ambivalent
at best: "There are several examples of how bulletin boards
have been used in support of criminal activities.... (B)ulletin
boards were used to relay illegally obtained access codes into
computer service companies. Pedophiles have been known to
leave suggestive messages on bulletin boards, and other
sexually oriented messages have been found on bulletin boards.
Members of cults and sects have also communicated through
bulletin boards. While the storing of information on bulletin
boards may not be illegal, the use of bulletin boards has
certainly advanced many illegal activities." Here is a
troubling concept indeed: invisible electronic pornography, to
be printed out at home and read by sects and cults. It makes a
mockery of the traditional law-enforcement techniques
concerning the publication and prosecution of smut. In fact,
the prospect of large numbers of antisocial conspirators,
congregating in the limbo of cyberspace without official
oversight of any kind, is enough to trouble the sleep of anyone
charged with maintaining public order. Even the sternest
free-speech advocate will likely do some headscratching at the
prospect of digitized "anarchy files" teaching lock-picking,
pipe-bombing, martial arts techniques, and highly unorthodox
uses for shotgun shells, especially when these neat-o
temptations are distributed freely to any teen (or pre-teen)
with a modem. These may be largely conjectural problems at
present, but the use of bulletin boards to foment hacker
mischief is real. Worse yet, the bulletin boards themselves
are linked, sharing their audience and spreading the wicked
knowledge of security flaws in the phone network, and in a wide
variety of academic, corporate and governmental computer
systems. This strength of the hackers is also a weakness,
however. If the boards are monitored by alert informants
and/or officers, the whole wicked tangle can be seized all
along its extended electronic vine, rather like harvesting
pumpkins. The war against hackers, including the "Cyberpunk
Bust," was primarily a war against hacker bulletin boards. It
was, first and foremost, an attack against the enemy's means of
information. This basic strategic insight supplied the
tactics for the crackdown of 1990. The variant groups in the
national subculture of cyber-law would be kept apprised,
persuaded to action, and diplomatically martialled into
effective strike position. Then, in a burst of energy and a
glorious blaze of publicity, the whole nest of scofflaws would
be wrenched up root and branch. Hopefully, the damage would be
permanent; if not, the swarming wretches would at least keep
their heads down. "Operation Sundevil," the Phoenix-inspired
crackdown of May 8,1990, concentrated on telephone code-fraud
and credit-card abuse, and followed this seizure plan with some
success. Boards went down all over America, terrifying the
underground and swiftly depriving them of at least some of
their criminal instruments. It also saddled analysts with some
24,000 floppy disks, and confronted harried Justice Department
prosecutors with the daunting challenge of a gigantic
nationwide hacker show-trial involving highly technical issues
in dozens of jurisdictions. As of July 1991, it must be
questioned whether the climate is right for an action of this
sort, especially since several of the most promising
prosecutees have already been jailed on other charges.
"Sundevil" aroused many dicey legal and constitutional
questions, but at least its organizers were spared the
spectacle of seizure victims loudly proclaiming their innocence
-- (if one excepts Bruce Esquibel, sysop of "Dr. Ripco," an
anarchist board in Chicago). The activities of March 1, 1990,
however, including the Jackson case, were the inspiration of
the Chicago-based Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force. At
telco urging, the Chicago group were pursuing the purportedly
vital "E911 document" with headlong energy. As legal
evidence, this proprietary Bell South document was to prove a
very weak reed in the Craig Neidorf trial, which ended in a
humiliating dismissal and a triumph for Neidorf. As of March
1990, however, this purloined data-file seemed a red-hot chunk
of contraband, and the decision was made to track it down
wherever it might have gone, and to shut down any board that
had touched it -- or even come close to it. In the meantime,
however -- early 1990 -- Mr. Loyd Blankenship, an employee of
Steve Jackson Games, an accomplished hacker, and a sometime
member and file-writer for the Legion of Doom, was
contemplating a "cyberpunk" simulation-module for the
flourishing GURPS gaming-system. The time seemed ripe for such
a product, which had already been proven in the marketplace.
The first games-company out of the gate, with a product boldly
called "Cyberpunk" in defiance of possible
infringement-of-copyright suits, had been an upstart group
called R. Talsorian. Talsorian's "Cyberpunk" was a fairly
decent game, but the mechanics of the simulation system sucked,
and the nerds who wrote the manual were the kimd of half-hip
twits who wrote their own fake rock lyrics and, worse yet,
published them. The game sold like crazy, though. The next
"cyberpunk" game had been the even more successful "Shadowrun"
by FASA Corporation. The mechanics of this game were fine, but
the scenario was rendered moronic by lame fantasy elements
like orcs, dwarves, trolls, magicians, and dragons -- all
highly ideologically-incorrect, according to the hard-edged,
high-tech standards of cyberpunk science fiction. No true
cyberpunk fan could play this game without vomiting, despite
FASA's nifty T-shirts and street-samurai lead figurines. Lured
by the scent of money, other game companies were champing at
the bit. Blankenship reasoned that the time had come for a
real "Cyberpunk" gaming-book -- one that the princes of
computer-mischief in the Legion of Doom could play without
laughing themselves sick. This book, GURPS Cyberpunk, would
reek of culturally on-line authenticity. Hot discussion soon
raged on the Steve Jackson Games electronic bulletin board, the
"Illuminati BBS." This board was named after a bestselling SJG
card-game, involving antisocial sects and cults who war
covertly for the domination of the world. Gamers and hackers
alike loved this board, with its meticulously detailed
discussions of pastimes like SJG's "Car Wars," in which
souped-up armored hot-rods with rocket-launchers and heavy
machine-guns do battle on the American highways of the future.
While working, with considerable creative success, for SJG,
Blankenship himself was running his own computer bulletin
board, "The Phoenix Project," from his house. It had been ages
-- months, anyway -- since Blankenship, an increasingly sedate
husband and author, had last entered a public phone-booth
without a supply of pocket-change. However, his intellectual
interest in computer-security remained intense. He was pleased
to notice the presence on "Phoenix" of Henry Kluepfel, a
phone-company security professional for Bellcore. Such
contacts were risky for telco employees; at least one such
gentleman who reached out to the hacker underground had been
accused of divided loyalties and summarily fired. Kluepfel, on
the other hand, was bravely engaging in friendly banter with
heavy-dude hackers and eager telephone-wannabes. Blankenship
did nothing to spook him away, and Kluepfel, for his part,
passed dark warnings about "Phoenix Project" to the Chicago
group. "Phoenix Project" glowed with the r "Illuminati" was
prominently mentioned on the Phoenix Project. Phoenix users
were urged to visit Illuminati, to discuss the upcoming
"cyberpunk" game and possibly lend their expertise. It was
also frankly hoped that they would spend some money on SJG
games. Illuminati and Phoenix had become two ripe pumpkins on
the criminal vine. Hacker busts were nothing new. They had
always been somewhat problematic for the authorities. The
offenders were generally high-IQ white juveniles with no
criminal record. Public sympathy for the phone companies was
limited at best. Trials often ended in puzzled dismissals or a
slap on the wrist. But the harassment suffered by "the
business community" -- always the best friend of law
enforcement -- was real, and highly annoying both financially
and in its sheer irritation to the target corporation. Through
long experience, law enforcement had come up with an unorthodox
but workable tactic. This was to avoid any trial at all, or
even an arrest. Instead, somber teams of grim police would
swoop upon the teenage suspect's home and box up his computer
as "evidence." If he was a good boy, and promised contritely
to stay out of trouble forthwith, the highly expensive
equipment might be returned to him in short order. If he was a
hard-case, though, too bad. His toys could stay boxed-up and
locked away for a couple of years. The busts in Austin were an
intensification of this tried-and-true technique. There were
adults involved in this case, though, reeking of a hardened
bad-attitude. The supposed threat to the 911 system,
apparently posed by the E911 document, had nerved law
enforcement to extraordinary effort. The 911 system is, of
course, the emergency dialling system used by the police
themselves. Any threat to it was a direct and insolent hacker
menace to the electronic home-turf of American law
enforcement. Had Steve Jackson been arrested and directly
accused of a plot to destroy the 911 system, the resultant
embarrassment would likely have been sharp, but brief. The
Chicago group, instead, chose total operational security. They
may have suspected that their search for E911, once publicized,
would cause that "dangerous" document to spread like wildfire
throughout the underground. Instead, they allowed the
misapprehension to spread that they had raided Steve Jackson to
stop the publication of a book: GURPS Cyberpunk. This was a
grave public-relations blunder which caused the darkest fears
and suspicions to spread -- not in the hacker underground, but
among the general public. On March 1, 1990, 21-year-old hacker
Chris Goggans (aka "Erik Bloodaxe") was wakened by a police
revolver levelled at his head. He watched, jittery, as Secret
Service agents appropriated his 300 baud terminal and, rifling
his files, discovered his treasured source-code for the
notorious Internet Worm. Goggans, a co-sysop of "Phoenix
Project" and a wily operator, had suspected that something of
the like might be coming. All his best equipment had been
hidden away elsewhere. They took his phone, though, and
considered hauling away his hefty arcade-style Pac-Man game,
before deciding that it was simply too heavy. Goggans was not
arrested. To date, he has never been charged with a crime.
The police still have what they took, though. Blankenship was
less wary. He had shut down "Phoenix" as rumors reached him of
a crackdown coming. Still, a dawn raid rousted him and his
wife from bed in their underwear, and six Secret Service
agents, accompanied by a bemused Austin cop and a corporate
security agent from Bellcore, made a rich haul. Off went the
works, into the agents' white Chevrolet minivan: an IBM PC-AT
clone with 4 meg of RAM and a 120-meg hard disk; a
Hewlett-Packard LaserJet II printer; a completely legitimate
and highly expensive SCO-Xenix 286 operating system; Pagemaker
disks and documentation; the Microsoft Word word-processing
program; Mrs. Blankenship's incomplete academic thesis stored
on disk; and the couple's telephone. All this property remains
in police custody today. The agents then bundled Blankenship
into a car and it was off the Steve Jackson Games in the bleak
light of dawn. The fact that this was a business headquarters,
and not a private residence, did not deter the agents. It was
still early; no one was at work yet. The agents prepared to
break down the door, until Blankenship offered his key. The
exact details of the next events are unclear. The agents would
not let anyone else into the building. Their search warrant,
when produced, was unsigned. Apparently they breakfasted from
the local "Whataburger," as the litter from hamburgers was
later found inside. They also extensively sampled a bag of
jellybeans kept by an SJG employee. Someone tore a "Dukakis
for President" sticker from the wall. SJG employees,
diligently showing up for the day's work, were met at the
door. They watched in astonishment as agents wielding crowbars
and screwdrivers emerged with captive machines. The agents
wore blue nylon windbreakers with "SECRET SERVICE" stencilled
across the back, with running-shoes and jeans. Confiscating
computers can be heavy physical work. No one at Steve Jackson
Games was arrested. No one was accused of any crime. There
were no charges filed. Everything appropriated was officially
kept as "evidence" of crimes never specified. Steve Jackson
will not face a conspiracy trial over the contents of his
science-fiction gaming book. On the contrary, the raid's
organizers have been accused of grave misdeeds in a civil suit
filed by EFF, and if there is any trial over GURPS Cyberpunk
it seems likely to be theirs. The day after the raid, Steve
Jackson visited the local Secret Service headquarters with a
lawyer in tow. There was trouble over GURPS Cyberpunk, which
had been discovered on the hard-disk of a seized machine.
GURPS Cyberpunk, alleged a Secret Service agent to astonished
businessman Steve Jackson, was "a manual for computer crime."
"It's science fiction," Jackson said. "No, this is real."
This statement was repeated several times, by several agents.
This is not a fantasy, no, this is real. Jackson's ominously
accurate game had passed from pure, obscure, small-scale
fantasy into the impure, highly publicized, large-scale fantasy
of the hacker crackdown. No mention was made of the real
reason for the search, the E911 document. Indeed, this fact
was not discovered until the Jackson search-warrant was
unsealed by his EFF lawyers, months later. Jackson was left
to believe that his board had been seized because he intended
to publish a science fiction book that law enforcement
considered too dangerous to see print. This misconception was
repeated again and again, for months, to an ever-widening
audience. The effect of this statement on the science fiction
community was, to say the least, striking. GURPS Cyberpunk,
now published and available from Steve Jackson Games (Box
18957, Austin, Texas 78760), does discuss some of the
commonplaces of computer-hacking, such as searching through
trash for useful clues, or snitching passwords by boldly lying
to gullible users. Reading it won't make you a hacker, any
more than reading Spycatcher will make you an agent of MI5.
Still, this bold insistence by the Secret Service on its
authenticity has made GURPS Cyberpunk the Satanic Verses of
simulation gaming, and has made Steve Jackson the first
martyr-to-the-cause for the computer world's civil
libertarians.
From the beginning, Steve Jackson declared that he had
committed no crime, and had nothing to hide. Few believed him,
for it seemed incredible that such a tremendous effort by the
government would be spent on someone entirely innocent.
Surely there were a few stolen long-distance codes in
"Illuminati," a swiped credit-card number or two -- something.
Those who rallied to the defense of Jackson were publicly
warned that they would be caught with egg on their face when
the real truth came out, "later." But "later" came and went.
The fact is that Jackson was innocent of any crime. There was
no case against him; his activities were entirely legal. He
had simply been consorting with the wrong sort of people. In
fact he was the wrong sort of people. His attitude stank. He
showed no contrition; he scoffed at authority; he gave aid and
comfort to the enemy; he was trouble. Steve Jackson comes
from subcultures -- gaming, science fiction -- that have always
smelled to high heaven of troubling weirdness and deep-dyed
unorthodoxy. He was important enough to attract repression,
but not important enough, apparently, to deserve a straight
answer from those who had raided his property and destroyed his
livelihood. The American law-enforcement community lacks the
manpower and resources to prosecute hackers successfully, one
by one, on the merits of the cases against them. The
cyber-police to date have settled instead for a cheap "hack" of
the legal system: a quasi-legal tactic of seizure and
"deterrence." Humiliate and harass a few ringleaders, the
philosophy goes, and the rest will fall into line. After all,
most hackers are just kids. The few grown-ups among them are
sociopathic geeks, not real players in the political and legal
game. And in the final analysis, a small company like
Jackson's lacks the resources to make any real trouble for the
Secret Service. But Jackson, with his conspiracy-soaked
bulletin board and his seedy SF-fan computer-freak employees,
is not "just a kid." He is a publisher, and he was battered by
the police in the full light of national publicity, under the
shocked gaze of journalists, gaming fans, libertarian activists
and millionaire computer entrepreneurs, many of whom were not
"deterred," but genuinely aghast. "What," reasons the author,
"is to prevent the Secret Service from carting off my
word-processor as 'evidence' of some non-existent crime?" "What
would I do," thinks the small-press owner, "if someone took my
laser-printer?" Even the computer magnate in his private jet
remembers his heroic days in Silicon Valley when he was
soldering semi-legal circuit boards in a small garage. Hence
the establishment of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The
sherriff had shown up in Tombstone to clean up that outlaw
town, but the response of the citizens was swift and
well-financed. Steve Jackson was provided with a high-powered
lawyer specializing in Constitutional freedom-of-the-press
issues. Faced with this, a markedly un-contrite Secret Service
returned Jackson's machinery, after months of delay -- some of
it broken, with valuable data lost. Jackson sustained many
thousands of dollars in business losses, from failure to meet
deadlines and loss of computer-assisted production. Half the
employees of Steve Jackson Games were sorrowfully laid-off.
Some had been with the company for years -- not statistics,
these people, not "hackers" of any stripe, but bystanders,
citizens, deprived of their livelihoods by the zealousness of
the March 1 seizure. Some have since been re-hired -- perhaps
all will be, if Jackson can pull his company out of its
persistent financial hole. Devastated by the raid, the company
would surely have collapsed in short order -- but SJG's
distributors, touched by the company's plight and feeling some
natural subcultural solidarity, advanced him money to scrape
along. In retrospect, it is hard to see much good for anyone
at all in the activities of March 1. Perhaps the Jackson case
has served as a warning light for trouble in our legal system;
but that's not much recompense for Jackson himself. His own
unsought fame may be helpful, but it doesn't do much for his
unemployed co-workers. In the meantime, "hackers" have been
vilified and demonized as a national threat. "Cyberpunk," a
literary term, has become a synonym for computer criminal. The
cyber-police have leapt where angels fear to tread. And the
phone companies have badly overstated their case and deeply
embarrassed their protectors. But sixteen months later, Steve
Jackson suspects he may yet pull through. Illuminati is still
on-line. GURPS Cyberpunk, while it failed to match Satanic
Verses, sold fairly briskly. And SJG headquarters, the site
of the raid, will soon be the site of Cyberspace Weenie Roast
to start an Austin chapter of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. Bring your own beer.